Cascio is a futurist who centres his thinking on the question: “what if human beings, and all of our technology, could actually manage to change things for the better?” He’s an optimist, and one who’s interested in ideas as far ranging as geoengineering, climate science, renewables, open source, emerging tech, social networks, ethics and transhumanism. He’s also spoken at TED. Interesting bloke, really.

Which is why when I saw the below, in the context of the above, I felt quite childish when my access point to considering his ‘Second Uncanny Valley’ as an academic framework are media such as Transmetropolitan, Neuromancer or even Lawnmower Man. Take a look:

Just for clarity, his principle thought is that in a posthuman world, Masahiro Mori‘s Uncanny Valley theory (green area) would need to be extended out into this new blue area:

Once a significant number of us are opting for cosmetic cyborgism, seeking out other human upgrades, or even just trying to fake it, we’ll probably feel quite weird about having transhumans (or homo superior as Magneto might say) walking among us. That’s the second uncanny valley, right there.

Guys like Kevin Warwick (pictured left) are probably the first wave of posthumanism yet to plunge into this new uncanny valley. All he has is a chip in his arm that opens doors on his university campus. He claims to be the “world’s first cyborg”, but as many of you will know, the upcoming singularity will see a lot more of us merging with the machine world.

The ultimate end, perhaps the ‘radical posthuman’ at the far right of Cascio’s model, might be an entirely discarnate consciousness: thought without body, or more likely a digital embodiment. And that’s as familiar, on this scale, as the industrial robots at the opposite end. But Cascio might say ‘not in a way that’s uncanny’. And he’d go on to say:

I wanted to be clear on a distinction between things made/evolved to be like humans, and things made/evolved from humans […] the H+ era is likely to see a diversity of morphologies, both physical and cognitive.

Not to put words in his mouth, but with all of the things we might evolve to become, physically, mentally, virtually or otherwise, I think the idea is that we make a sort of ‘leap across’ the second uncanny valley to a place where we’re comfortable with our future lives.

My esteemed colleague Mr. James Wheatley this morning attended the first of WIRED magazine’s Intelligence Briefings, where they aim to share some of the trends that they feel are going to be most impactful over the coming year.

He has identified the main ideas from their presentation, which I repost here:

A New Era of Etiquette:

Through social media our online reputations now require careful management. Our social profiles are available for numerous people to see, share and comment on – and there is an emerging importance on the etiquette attached to these public profiles.

The most important etiquette rules identified were: Always credit the work or links of others; Always be respectful even in disagreement; Companies can not pose as customers; You can ignore friend requests; Privacy must always be respected.

Social Networks have a Half-Life:

We’ve seen this from Friends Reunited, Bebo and Myspace – is Facebook in danger of having peaked already, or by allowing companies to come in and create widgets, will they be able to stay in the sun?

Google’s Achilles Heel:

Twitter has stepped ahead of Google with their developments in realtime search. Will Google be able to keep up and is this the first technological challenge to Google?

Individuals vs Corporations:

The internet has allowed new ways for individuals to organise outside of their organisations. Companies will be transformed as new generations of employees introduce expectations of transparency (think whistle blowing scandles, MP’s expenses, etc).

The Media are Becoming Unpoliceable:

With media consumption and production more liberated from geographic boundaries, attempts to monitor and control consumption will be increasingly difficult for UK regulators.

New Types of Abundance Require New Types of Scarcity:

With so much content now available online to users, attention from consumers is becoming a greater challenge and a scarce resource.

Watch Out, Sport:

First it was music and films, now “pirate” sports streams are on the rise – 27% of WIRED readers would consider illegally accessing a live broadcast of sport. Piracy normally grows due to high costs or lack of access – and sport ticks both those boxes.

Comments were that the Premier League in particular need to tie up their access via one central publisher/access point globally, and make access more affordable – otherwise pirate streams of premier league football will continue to thrive.

Nice one James, it sounds like it was really interesting session, and be sure to check back to see if any of my readers have any questions for you!

Quite an open format – their aim was to share some of the trends that they feel are going to be most impactful over the coming year. In typical WIRED fashion, everything is centred around fresh thinking and innovations rather than being market focussed, but still quite interesting.

Have summarised the main trends below – I’ve got a handout if anyone wants to read anymore as well:
A new era of etiquette: Through social media our online reputations now require careful management. Our social profiles are available for numerous people to see, share and comment on – and there is an emerging importance on the etiquette attached to these public profiles. The most important etiquette rules identified were: Always credit the work or links of others; Always be respectful even in disagreement; Companies can not pose as customers; You can ignore friend requests; Privacy must always be respected.
Social Networks have a half-life: We’ve seen this from Friends Reunited, Bebo and Myspace – is Facebook in danger of having peaked already, or by allowing companies to come in and create widgets, will they be able to stay in the sun?
Google’s Achilles Heel: Twitter has stepped ahead of Google with their developments in realtime search. Will Google be able to keep up and is this the first technological challenge to Google?
Individuals vs Corporations: The internet has allowed new ways for individuals to organise outside of their organisations. Companies will be transformed as new generations of employees introduce expectations of transparency (think whistle blowing scandles, MP’s expenses, etc).
The Media are becoming unpoliceable: With media consumption and production more liberated from geographic boundaries, attempts to monitor and control consumption will be increasingly difficult for UK regulators.
New types of abundance require new types of scarcity: With so much content now available online to users, attention from consumers is becoming a greater challenge and a scarce resource.
Watch out sport: First it was music and films, now “pirate” sports streams are on the rise – 27% of WIRED readers would consider illegally accessing a live broadcast of sport. Piracy normally grows due to high costs or lack of access – and sport ticks both those boxes. Comments were that the Premier League in particular need to tie up their access via one central publisher / access point globally, and make access more affordable – otherwise pirate streams of premier league football will continue to thrive.

Though you can still access my experimental lifestream at http://digitalcortex.net/stream, I hope it’ll soon be replaced with this cool new open-source lifestreaming tool from jonpauldavies. Key features are:

Looks to be especially good at styling, with several themes ready out of the box.

16 built-in social services with RSS input for those other fiddly ones no-one really uses.

Graphing tools built-in for crispy pie charts etc.

Plus, the PR job he’s doing over at lifestreamblog.com will work wonders at driving support, the main reason SweetCron is lagging behind. Check it out:

I’ve just set up Yonkfook’s Sweetcron here at Digital Cortex – and am closely considering my next steps.

Do I continue blogging here? Do I move to a wholly auto-generated stream?

The advantages of WordPress are a highly extensible and powerful platform for the delivery of text and rich media.
The advantages of Sweetcron are (apparently) a highly extensible and powerful platform for the delivery of shortform text and images.
The answer for now, is to do both, and somehow, somehow, get the two to link up.

The numerous hosted content aggregators and WordPress lifestreaming plugins I’ve tried just haven’t performed as I’d hoped, but I see so much promise to take Digital Cortex up a level if I can only boost my own technical skills.

Will post a review of the lifestreaming technologies I’ve tried to date, but in the meantime I’ll continue trying to make this look like the rest of my site.